When I trained as a Wise Hippo teacher, helping pregnant couples on their journey through pregnancy to birth I never thought I would see as much birth trauma and hear as many negative birth stories as I did.

This spurred me on to train in the three step rewind technique, which allows anyone who has had a negative birth experience and is suffering from the effects of Birth trauma and PTSD sever the negative emotions they have attached to the experience.

I have seen remarkable results using this technique but recently I have seen an increase in the amount of birth partners who have been able to go through the technique with me and see a massive improvement in how they feel about their birth.

When I trained in this technique I really only thought that it would be the mums that would be calling me for help, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Having helped countless couples through their experience I have been told first hand many times that as a birth partner you just stand there watching everything happen, that you have absolutely no control of the situation and sometimes don’t even have any idea whats happening. In some situations they can be told that they are going to lose their partner and/or their baby and being in those kinds of situation is what causes birth trauma in birth partners.

I hear so often from the birth partners that they bury everything down, they need to go back to work after their paternity leave and provide for their family, they feel like they can’t feel what they are feeling as it wasn’t them it happened to. So they just try to carry on as normal.

Ladies, we know our partners better than anyone else, if you see a change in their moods and how they are feeling speak to them and ask them to reach out, either to someone like me or to their GP.

Although there is nothing you can do to prevent a crappy curve ball being thrown in on the day your baby is born, there are things you can do to help prepare both you and your birth partner.

Take a hypnobirthing class, if you are unable to afford a class then please read a book on it. You will be amazed when you learn about how your labour works during labour and what can stall your labour.

During a class you will also learn how to work as a team on the big day, your birth partner will learn how best to support you and how to question the medical professionals should any need to speak to them arise.

And, most importantly you will learn how to stay calm and relaxed, and if you are calm and relaxed your baby will also be calm and relaxed.